A new year and a little recap

Jan 8,2010 / By Maria / 2 Comments

>

I’ve been cloth diapering now for around 12 weeks.

I’ve done a lot of boring estimations and calculations. The conclusion is that the diapers I’ve purchased have paid for themselves. That includes all money I’ve spent as well as gifts and gift certificates.

Money isn’t why I switched to cloth, but it sure doesn’t hurt. Also consider that with disposables, that money would be in the landfill. With cloth, I could stop cloth diapering tomorrow and be able to make a decent amount of my money back by selling the diapers, or at the very least, pass them on to someone else.

I know that the devil’s advocates will have something to say about the cost of washing the diapers. The lil outlaws detergent I’ve been using doesn’t cost any more than a decent “baby” detergent, and in fact costs considerably less when taking advantage of Jacklen’s sales. We have well water, therefore there is no cost for the water. I have an HE washer, so there isn’t much hot water used. I hang diapers to dry and the inserts take no time to dry in the dryer. I’ve noticed no change in my electric bill. Often, I’ll go ahead and throw my son’s clothes in with the diapers also, making it even more efficient.

The real reason I switched was for my son’s health. Since cloth diapering, his bottom is totally clear. He gets a tiny bit of redness when he dirties his diaper, even when changed immediately. A thin layer of Grandma El’s and he’s good as new by the next diaper change.

My son wore a disposable diaper for a few hours one day and literally had raised, red welts on his bottom. I actually love cloth diapering, but even if it were tons of work and very expensive, I’d still do it!

Saving a good $3 per day doesn’t hurt either!

0

Cloth doll diapers

Jan 7,2010 / By Maria / No Comment

>It’s not that difficult to find cheap, single layer flannel doll diapers, like the ones that come with American Girl Bitty Baby.

However, I’ve been suckered into buying my daughter a Baby Alive Whoopsie Doo Doll for her birthday next month. I never intended to buy the baby alive diapers at over a buck a pop, but the preemie size disposables aren’t looking that attrative to me either. Not just because I’m sure she will go through a pack the first day she has it, but it’s environmentally irresponsible and just not something I want to do.

Anyway, there are some sellers on Hyenacart that have really cute doll diapers. They are much cuter and better made than the aforementioned American Girl diapers, but still only typically have two layers, and won’t hold up to a heavy wetting baby doll.

The maker of Heartland Dreams diapers offers doll diapers made by her 12 year old daughter, and said she could do a diaper with added material to make it a bit absorbent. At $4 each, a handful of them would be a much better investment than sposies anyway!

0

Handmade Items WAHM made

A little off topic

Jan 5,2010 / By Maria / 3 Comments

>I have talked about “free for shipping” drawings on hyenacart before. In stalking some FFS diapers, I came across a homemade “taggie” blanket that I loved, made by DooDooRags. I loved it so much, I contacted her right away to see if she could make another one for me. I entered the drawing, but as I expected, I didn’t win!

As it turns out, she makes diapers too! So I guess this isn’t totally of topic.

I had seen taggie blankets when my daughter was little, but she wasn’t really into that. My son loves the tags on burp cloths and such, so this will be perfect for him! The front is an adorable puppy print and the back is a bubble minky fabric, giving him another texture also.

Those are the sellers photos, I asked and she said I could use them.

This is too cute, and I love that I’m supporting a work-at-home-mom instead of buying a factory produced item from a big corporation.

I started working on this post last week and I got the blanket today. Um…squee!!!! It is so freaking adorable. I wish we had feel-o-vision because it is soooo soft. As I suspected, my son latched onto it (and the “tags”) right away. I LOVE this and I can’t believe it cost so little. It is beautifully made and I wouldn’t know it wasn’t a pricey, mass produced item if you didn’t tell me. Actually, that’s not true. It’s too well made to be factory made.

I am going to update this post with “action” shots soon, I’m pecking this out one-handed while nursing a sleepy boy right now. (see below!)

I wouldn’t hesitate for a second to buy anything from this seller and when I have a few bucks to spend, I am definitely trying one of her diapers!! She told me “I am better at diapers! I mostly make the taggies for gifts and for my son.” So if she is better at diapers, they sure must be great! I think a taggie blanket would be a really nice baby gift, especially if you worked with her to find a fabric that would match the nursery decor.

0

Made in the USA Wet Bags & Pail Liners

Planet Wise wet bags

Dec 30,2009 / By Maria / 2 Comments

>I love my Planet Wise small wet bag, but I wanted a few more. You can read more about why I love them in my wish list post.

The colors and prints are adorable.

I got a medium, to give me a little more wiggle room than the small I have now (that holds 2 diapers but it’s a tight fit).

I also got a wet/dry bag, which is almost exactly the same size as the medium bag. However, it has a separate “dry” pocket on the outside to hold clean diapers, and also has a snap loop handle. I thought this would be great to keep several diapers in the car when we were going to be out and about for a bit longer and would need more than the two or so I could easily fit in my bag.

I fit four clean diapers with no trouble & tons more room.

I also got a large wet bag to keep in the laundry room to use as a diaper pail basically.

I looped it on the drawer handle for now. It’s awesome! It fits a day’s worth of diapers (10) easily, with no wicking & no smell. Boy does it stink when I unzip it at the end of the day, ha ha! I’ve put dripping wet diapers in it after rinsing, and it doesn’t leak when closed, even if I hold it upside down.

At the end of the day, I just unzip and shake the diapers into the washer. I pull the inserts out and fold laundry tabs in before I put them in the wet bag to make things simpler. Then I toss the bag in too!

You can dry these in the dryer, but I want to baby them, so I hung them to dry. The insides of the bags are PUL.

By morning, it’s dry & ready to use again, but I’d love to have a second one, so I can have one in use constantly.

I wish all of the wet bags had the loop handle. A medium would be great to hang on the dishwasher handle to hold wet towels, dish cloths, and cloth napkins (when I finally get some!) It would also be handy to be able to loop a wet bag around my diaper bag handle. I love the wet/dry bag, but I usually just keep 1 or 2 diapers and a folded up wet bag in my bag for short trips. It workd wonderfully, but would be convenient to hang it on my bag handle instead of trying to shove it back in the bag.

I also got a large “basic” pail liner.

The outside is super soft and it has an elastic drawstring and PUL inside.

I haven’t tried it in my diaper dekor yet. As I said in my post about pails, I’m not sure if it would be worth the trouble, it might be easier to stick with what I’m doing now!

0

Econobum

Dec 29,2009 / By Maria / 4 Comments

>I got this free with an order by using a coupon code. Not a fan.

It consists of a nice prefold. I mean a really nice prefold. Not even in the same neighborhood (or country for that matter) as those Gerber diapers people use as burp cloths. Really.

and an extremely thin, cheap, one size cover. It comes in white only.

The prefold is unbleached cotton, so it had to be “prepped” by washing 3-5 times, which I did. Supposedly, you are able to trifold the prefold, and place it inside, rather than pinning or using a snappi, so that’s what I did.

Leaked instantly! (Probably not fully prepped) I suppose I should give it another chance, but I really don’t care to. I believe the intention is to re-use the cover, only changing the prefold (unless the cover gets really dirty).

At under $10 retail for a set of 1 cover and 1 prefold, this would be a very economical method of diapering, especially if you were to buy just a few, and fill in with plain old (decent) prefolds.

However, I feel that you’d be much better served to buy a few BG 3.0s (approximately 2x the cost of an econobum set), adding to your stash as you could (this is pretty much what I did).

I definitely do not see an econobum lasting through more than one child (I’d be surprised if it lasted more than a few months) nor would I expect it to have any resale value.

I’d definitely put this is the “penny wise, pound foolish” category.

0

Author Archives: Maria

A new year and a little recap

Cloth doll diapers

A little off topic

Planet Wise wet bags

Econobum

Subscribe